


Last Train to Mewni

by harmonicacave



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Screenplay/Script Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10038749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harmonicacave/pseuds/harmonicacave
Summary: It's a big day for Star in Butterfly family history, as she sets off for her first solo trip on the Mewni Royal Train. But when Marco begins to suspect something sinister, he must find a way to get to Mewni to uncover the plot and rescue Star.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Last year, I co-wrote a spec SVTFOE script for the Nickelodeon Writing Contest. Since a lot of what we wrote was either explored or contradicted in canon later (it's funny how we guessed a few things right! ...and got a lot wrong), the script was sitting on my computer without any purpose. I've switched it into prose as well as I can, but hey, it's just for fun anyway.

Marco brushes his teeth at one of the two sinks in the shared bathroom. He drops some toothpaste on his trademark red hoodie. He sighs.

“Good morning, Marco!” Star’s voice startles Marco, who jumps.

“AH! Star! Hi.”

Star walks over to the second sink, where her half of the counter is cluttered with typical teen girl cosmetics, plus strange magical items and slices of pizza. Marco returns to brushing his teeth.

Star uses a cord from the counter to plug her wand into the wall outlet. The wand makes a charging sound, then beeps to signal it’s ready.

Star holds up the wand to her hair. “Mystic curling glitter laser!”

A beam of heat shoots out of the wand. Star uses the wand to very quickly curl one side of her hair and then the other into a Gibson Girl-esque pompadour.

Marco puts down his toothbrush. He can’t concentrate.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Star was using her wand to spray a thick mist of hairspray into her hair. She stops and looks at Marco.

“Big day; big hair,” she explains. “It’s finally my turn to take the royal train to the Mewni Orphanage and read to all the tiny children.”

“Oo-kay…” Marco replies, clearly not getting it. Star tries to explain again.

“Marco! I finally get to do a royal duty! Reading to orphans is a family tradition for teenage royalty. Look!”

Star pulls a Royal Family photo album out from under a pile on the bathroom counter. She holds the album open for Marco to see. The photo shows Star’s great-grandfather as a fifteen-year-old: blond hair slicked to the side, Edwardian-era dandy suit. Strong resemblance to Star.

“Here is my great-great-grandpa before an orphan train ride.”

“Do you seriously call it that?” Marco asks, but Star is already flipping to the next photo.

“And here’s great-grandma Butterfly, helping my grandma on her first ride. Grandma was my age, Marco! Do you believe that?”

Photo of Star’s GREAT GRANDMOTHER, 40s, with blue pompadour hair towering high, holding Star’s GRANDMOTHER’s hand next to the train. Her grandmother’s hair is curled like Star’s.

“Well—” tries Marco before Star cuts him off again.

“AND LOOK! MY PARENTS!”

Star flips a couple of pages in the photo album and pulls out a large, color photograph, faded with age. It’s of Star’s parents when they were 19.

QUEEN MOON and KING RIVER BUTTERFLY wear similar suits. Short, strong and lacking his usual blond facial hair, King River just picked up Queen Moon to set her on the train step.

Queen Moon is laughing, and her blue hair is curled into victory rolls on the top of her head. The rest of her hair is down. She looks very different from the queen today.

“No way! That’s your parents?”

“When they were teenagers, yep,” Star says as she snaps the album shut without putting the photo back in its proper place. She hands the album to Marco. “And now it’s my turn!”

Star runs across the hall into her room and shuts the door in Marco’s face.

“Hey!” Marco shouts, but he does not have long to be mad. Star suddenly opens the door and is now wearing a pinstripe Edwardian-era suit of her own, although with a skirt. Her frilly collared shirt is buttoned high on her neck. Star holds a clutch purse in one hand, with her wand and

dimensional scissors sticking out.

“What’s with the suit?” Marco inquires.

“It’s business casual.”

Marco’s skeptical expression insists otherwise as he follows Star into her magically expanded tower room.

“OK, time to go! Bye!” Star cuts through the air with her dimensional scissors, opening a portal to Mewni. Star dances through the portal backwards and is gone.

Marco looks down at the photo album he’s still holding. He opens to the first page: an old photo of the train: a massive blue and silver engine with several ornate train cars.

_That’s really cool._ Marco flips a few pages forward. The photo of Star’s parents falls to the floor, landing face down. He picks it up quickly and notices writing on the back. He reads it.

“ ‘Queen and King Butterfly on the... _last royal train ride’_?” Marco begins to panic. He hastily flips to the next page of the photo album. There is a photo of the royal train covered in caution tape.

Marco flips the page again to a photo of the train cars being disconnected from the engine. Another page: the engine being pushed towards a large shed for storage.

“Something’s not right here.” Marco flips through the album so quickly now that it appears

to be animated, flip-book style. The album shows the train being pushed all the way into the

shed, which is then covered with many large chains and locked. Beside the last photo are the words RETIRED PERMANENTLY.

“I’ve gotta find Star!”

 

*.*.*

 

Meanwhile, at a table next to the window of the Royal Train dining car, Star hums manically and peacefully to herself while she looks at a brochure on synchronized ice fishing in the Mewni Mountains.

Something creepy looms behind Star, obscured by shadow.

 

*.*.*

 

On Earth, Marco paces the floor. He’s freaking out.

“What am I gonna do?” the words spill out quickly. “I don’t have my dimensional scissors! I can’t tell my parents. I can’t tell Star’s parents. My friends can’t help…GAH! What am I gonna do-hoo-hoo?”

Marco falls on his knees, exasperated. He looks up. The Blood Moon Ball bell is on Star’s desk. Realization crosses his face.

 

*.*.*

 

Marco steps into a dark room, with fire, brimstone and some very jagged rocks as far as the eye can see. Suddenly, high-pitched singing floats through the room.

_“Things got so dark, I thought I might as well…”_

Marco follows the voice, who is singing a (parody) song in the style of the Darkness.

Marco walks further into the room and sees Tom.

Tom folds laundry on a table in front of him as he sings with his eyes closed. All of his laundry is the same outfit that he’s wearing: torn-up red shirt with torn-up brown shorts.

“ _Take a one-way bus trip down to hell!”_

Tom picks up a red shirt that is still in like-new condition and opens his eyes. Tom makes a girly surprised squeal. He didn’t hear Marco arrive.

Tom swiftly regains composure to start giving Marco the third degree.

“You! Back to completely ruin another part of my life?” the demon growls.

“Tom, I need—” but Marco interrupts himself. “Your shirt is on fire!”

“What?” Tom looks at the shirt in his hand. The bottom and both sleeves are on fire.

“Again?!”

Tom dunks the flaming shirt into a pail of water he has on hand, rings out the shirt, and holds it up. The sleeves and bottom are now ripped like all his other shirts. Tom tosses the shirt aside and points at Marco.

“Why in the Underworld are you here!?”

 

*.*.*

 

Star turns around to look at the door of the dining car. It’s shrouded in shadow and shaking a little.

Suddenly, creepy noises come from beyond the door. Startled, Star falls out of her seat. She jumps up, ready for action, wand in front of her as she proceeds to the door.

She crosses the threshold and steps onto a wooden platform at the edge of a thick, verdant jungle. Rustling leaves signal a monster is fleeing deeper into the train car’s tree cover.

“Ludo,” Star breaths as she runs after the rustling sound, plunging into the jungle.

 

*.*.*

 

Marco and Tom stand face-to-face across the laundry table.

“Look, I know this sounds strange, especially since I don’t like you, but I need your help,” Marco insists.

Tom laughs in Marco’s face. “Why should I help a conniving little twerp like you? I’m a demon. I don’t have to listen to you!”

As Tom speaks the last sentence, his eyes begin to glow. His voice triples with echoing demon power. Marco steps back to prepare for some self-defensive karate, but then stops.

“It’s not about me,” he says. “It’s Star!”

Tom softens and his voice becomes more normal, although the glow does not fade from his eyes. “Starship?”

Marco nods.

“She’s in trouble, and...you’re the only one who can help save her.”

Tom seems to inhale a gasp of breath and snaps back to normal.

“What do you mean, earth turd?” Tom eyes Marco suspiciously, but he is clearly concerned. “What do we need to do?”

 

*.*.*

 

The Royal Train rushes through the picturesque Mewni countryside. Tom and Marco fly through the air: Tom casually on his fire shoes; Marco screaming, hanging onto Tom desperately and awkwardly from Tom’s left leg.

Marco looks down, still freaking out, and sees they are approaching the train rapidly. The train bullets through the green plains of countryside, a shining river to its right.

Marco screams again as Tom drops him. Marco plummets towards the deck of the caboose.

Tom lands gracefully, brushing off his shirt ceremoniously. Marco unsticks his face from the floor.

“Now what, smart guy?” Tom asks. Marco glares at him, dusting himself off unceremoniously.

“I don’t know what car she’s in,” Marco admits with reluctance. “I guess we start at the end and work forward 'til we find her.”

“Fine.”

Tom bursts through the door in a splash of flames, leaving Marco to scamper after him.

Tom and Marco immediately land in the ankle-deep, watery, mossy mud of a vast swamp, magically contained in the train caboose. Everything is a shade of brown. Smatterings of not-as-wet patches of ground and islands are scattered between puddles and swampy ground, marked by intricate structures of roots. A far off backdrop of huge tree trunks is obscured by a thin mist, implying the distant train car wall. Ahead are branches far above use for climbing.

Marco calls for Star, but his voice falls flat in the vast expanse of the car.

“She’s not in this car,” Tom smirks.

 

*.*.*

 

Star surveys her surroundings as she walks further into the jungle car, pushing back vines and reeds of grass. Several feet away, crocodiles snap their jaws open and closed in a shallow river.

“Woooooahhhhh....”

Suddenly there’s a rustling in the leaves, approaching her. She strengthens her stance, baring her wand like a blade. She steps back, preparing for the worst.

A small, eagle-like creature with abnormally broad shoulders bursts from the grass. The eagle-creature looks mournfully up at Star with its giant puppy-dog eyes.

“Awwwwww!!” Star squeals as she kneels down to pick the little bird up.

“Oh my goodness, you’re lost, aren’t you? Where’s your mom, baby chicken?”

The eagle creature chirrups and dances about excitedly, gesturing up into the trees. Star looks to see a nest sitting on a cliff on the side of a mountain peek, past many trees, in the surprisingly big expanse in this train car.

Star’s baby voice disappears, replaced by deadpan determination. “Of course.”

Star brings the eagle creature in close to her chest, under her arm. She runs to a nearby rock and springs off of it into the air. She grabs a vine, and with her other hand, shoots the wand behind her with a yellow stream of lemon magic.

“Laser lemon rocket propulsion!”

Star swings over the crocodile river and flies through the air, winking at the camera at the peak of her arc. Star grabs the tip of a treetop as she comes down, using the bend in the tree to propel her further until she lands on a ledge just below the nest.

She looks up and bites her lip. _Hmmm._

She looks side to side. There are walls of rock on either side of her, close together. She runs to the nearest wall and shoves off of it towards the other wall, then she kicks up higher from that wall.

Star nearly makes it to the nest. In midair, Star uses her wand magic to propel herself up through the last bit of space to the nest. She lands and rests briefly on one knee, then produces the ecstatic eaglet from her blazer pocket. The eagle creature is returned to its nest.

Star hears a suspicious laugh and turns. She walks towards the sound, away from the cliff edge.

Suddenly, a hole opens up beneath Star to reveal a gigantic slide.

“Wuhhh?!” Star gasps, but there’s no time to waste. She slides down it into darkness and the next train car.

 

*.*.*

 

Tom steps forward into the swamp. Marco follows. Their movement forces water into Marco’s shoes.

“Ugh! No! Wet socks already,” Marco laments. “Why did it have to be _gross_?”

Tom smirks, but he also unhappily pulls his feet from the mud, moving to one of the dryer patches of land. Tom taps his feet together and his shoes ignite, but only just. The flames sputter and turn to smoke.

“It’s going to get a lot worse than this,” Tom replies unsympathetically. “This is a dimensional train. Each car is a new challenge.” Tom leans down and tightens his shoelaces.

“You have to figure out the puzzle to get to the next car. Well, I do. I’m gonna get through first and save Star myself. Have fun in the kiddie pool, crybaby.”

“HEY!”

Marco tries to chase after Tom as he runs off, but he falls over because his feet are still deep in mud. With much whining and moaning, Marco pries his feet from the mud before jumping from island to island, trying desperately to catch up with Tom, who disappears far ahead into the mist.

“Wait up,” Marco calls after Tom as he pushes into the mist. He gradually gains on Tom — at

the price of also gaining very muddy clothing.

Tom looks back to laugh as Marco steps in a particularly muddy puddle. Still running, Tom runs right into a huge frog monster. The frog monster lets out a squeaky croak.

Suddenly, the frog opens its mouth and swallows Tom whole.

Marco, very close now, stops, shocked. The frog monster and Marco stare at each other for a few seconds.

Tom’s head bursts from the frog monster’s mouth with a great wave of saliva. Tom sputters and yells, “Help!”

As Tom comically sits inside the frog, Marco merely points at him and laughs.

“Who’s laughing now, Tom?” Marco leans on his knee, doubled over with laughter, then

stands up again. “It’s me!”

“Shut up,” Tom complains. He glowers at Marco before he slops out of the frog’s mouth. The frog monster slime splashes on Marco, hitting him in the face.

Disgusted, Marco tries to clean the slime off as well as he can. Meanwhile, Tom runs ahead a few paces to tug on a door handle between the trees on the train car wall. It’s locked.

Marco wipes his face with his hoodie sleeve and notices a key now stuck to his sleeve.

“I got it,” Marco says and unlocks the door with a flourish.

Strong wind rushes through the door, and Tom gets sucked into the next car. Marco holds onto the door frame to keep from following.

“Tom!”

The frog monster hops close to Marco. It croaks and sticks out his tongue.

“Here goes nothing,” Marco says with a sigh. He lets go of the door frame and, with a whoosh, flies into the next car.

 

*.*.*

 

Darkness is suddenly cut by a weak spotlight, revealing Star sitting as prisoner at an exquisite rectangular dining table set for six. Five empty chairs match Star’s around the table. An abundance of silverware, plates and glasses make the table look ready for a foodless banquet.

The ambience is of a 1990s Simon game commercial. Soft blue light marks the dark, gray wall’s perimeter at intervals. Star struggles to release herself from the chair that she appears to be tied to.

“I dreamed it would end this way,” Star laments.

However, Star soon realizes she just has a very heavy cloth napkin on her lap.

“A-ha!” Star finally pulls her arm and wand out from under thenapkin. She bumps her hand on the bottom of the table, hitting a small green button.

An electronic game intro song plays as different parts of the table and dishes light up, alternating blue, red, green and yellow. The music stops when a digital female voice speaks.

“Get ready to play.”

An electronic note or beep plays as two spots on the table light up red: the outermost fork on the left side, and the top right quarter of the main dinner plate.

“Oooooo.” Star reaches for the fork with her left hand, leaning herright elbow on the table. The table buzzes, signaling she did something wrong.

“Elbows off the table,” the voice chides robotically.

Star squeals and recoils as the chair at the opposite end of the table falls through the floor, disappearing with a crash.

“Uh-oh,” Star murmurs. The voice calls back to her: “Do you want to play again?”

While Star deliberates, the game begins again anyway. The electronic game intro song and lights play.

A second electronic beep, in a different key, plays. The lower right quarter of Star’s plate, and a spoon on the right side of the table, light up blue.

Star picks up the spoon and taps it where the blue light had been on the plate. The spoon and plate flash blue. She hesitantly puts the spoon back in place. Nothing happens. Star sighs with relief.

The blue spot on the plate lights up with a beep. Before Star can pick up the spoon she just had, the red spot lights up on the plate.

Star scrambles for the spoon and the fork at the same time.She taps both to their respective spots on the plate. An ascending chord plays, signifying Star has leveled up. Star cheers for herself. “Yeah!”

 

*.*.*

 

Marco shoots through the air and slams into the back of a giant desk fan. Marco falls to the floor and lands on Tom, who has landed in a bin full of red and blue jumpsuits.

“Get off me!” Tom shoves Marco off, although they stay in the bin.

“Where are we?” Marco asks.  Tom gestures for Marco to look at their surroundings: it’s a

game show with huge obstacle course props and a trivia station.

“Trouble, There!” Tom scoffs.

The game show logo appears on screen, looking suspiciously like the Double Dare logo, but with an icon of a man pointing into the distance.

“Where?” asks Marco again.

“It’s Mewni’s most popular game show,” spits Tom, disgusted.

“Game show!” Marco’s face lights up. “Now this is more like it.”

“Ugh. Humans.”

Marco jumps out of the bin and pulls on a red jumpsuit. He picks up another jumpsuit and shoves it towards Tom.

“Come on; put this on,” Marco says. “We’ve gotta find Star.”

 

*.*.*

 

At the table, with now only three chairs including Star’s, Star’s plate flashes (with accompanying musical beeps) blue, red, blue again, yellow twice and green.

Star picks up the spoon and taps the plate. She picks up the fork and taps the plate. She slouches low in her chair as she reaches for a second spoon further down the table, but it’s too late. The buzzer sounds.

“Sit up straight.”

The chair next to Star falls through the floor. Star screams, but she stops long enough to snap her shoulders back to the chair with perfect posture. She resumes her squeal.

“You can do this, Star,” she whispers to herself. “It’s just like Thanksgiving. Actually, this is pretty similar to Thanksgiving…”

With renewed determination, Star sits like a proper lady as she goes through the motions of the intricate memory game with the silverware and dishes.

“More tea, madame?” inquires the voice.

“Yes, please.” Star daintily lifts a tea spoon from above her plate to tap the purple light of a cup and saucer.

Star leaves the spoon on the saucer and quickly picks up a butter knife from the right of the plate, tapping it to the green-lit lower left quarter of her main plate.

A yellow light, with accompanying musical beeps, flashes twice on the top left quarter of the plate. Star reaches to her left for the proper fork, but no forks are there.

“Where’s that fork?” Star whispers. She reaches further. Her fingers wrap around a short salad

fork. She taps the plate once. The buzzer sounds.

“Always use the proper fork.”

With a crack, Star’s chair falls through the floor.

“Ah!”

Star flips in the air, narrowly escaping the fall herself. She flicks one end of her napkin at her plate, which is lighting up red, blue, green and yellow.

“Enough! Mind your own manners!” Star retorts. She lassos the plate with her napkin and pulls the plate into her hand.

With a leap forward and a battle cry, Star launches the plate into the darkness ahead of her. Hyah! The plate smashes into the wall and reveals a now-open door. The etiquette table explodes in a poof of smoke.

Star smiles sweetly and curtsies before the explosion launches her through the open door. She flies through the air, sitting with perfect posture on nothing.

 

*.*.*

 

Back on set for the game show, Marco and Tom are wearing red jumpsuits and elbow and knee guards. Each jumpsuit has a name tag on it.

Marco’s name is written in bold print, while “Tom the demon” is written in a hurried cursive on Tom.

Hason Jarris, a curly-haired, excited game show host stands next to Marco and Tom on the game show stage.

Marco is wearing large galoshes. Round, bluish clouds hang ominously above him, with big red targets on them. Tom stands at a firetruck-style water canon. Marco groans as he looks up at the clouds.

“The name of the game is fill the galoshes!” Hason Jarris explains in the singsong timbre of a game show host. “Tom the Lemon has to shoot the correct cloud as it hovers over Marco until the galoshes are filled with blue goop!

Tom winces when he’s called a lemon—but he grins at “filled with blue goop.”

“On your mark... Get set... Go!” The music swells and Hason Jarris gives the signal. Tom

begins spraying blue goo gleefully. Marco freaks out and runs from the clouds, his arms flailing comically above him. Tom starts to get frustrated.

“Yo! Marco, what are you doing?”

“SOGGY!” Marco continues to run.

“This is not looking good for our less-than-dynamic duo, folks!” Hason Jarris narrates from the sideline.

Marco runs and yells. Tom keeps shooting frantically from cloud to cloud. One of the clouds starts actively following Marco.

“AHHHHH!!!!”

Tom shoves the water canon to the side. “Marco! Why’d you even come to me if you can’t get over yourself enough to help save Star?”

Marco grits his teeth and looks at the cloud.

“Ten seconds left!” Hason Jarris calls.

“OK.” Marco turns around. “For Star!”

Marco runs towards the cloud. Tom shoots. The goop falls from the cloud and engulfs Marco in a resounding splash. Marco screams.

Looking very upset, Marco stands drenched in blue goop and shivering. His boots are completely flooded.

“They’ve done it folks! I can’t believe it, but these two numbskulls have done it!” Hason Jarris is back on the floor. “I wouldn’t’ve believed it if you’d told me, but they actually worked together and won! Tiffany, tell ‘em what they’ve won.”

“They advance to the next train car!” an unseen woman named Tiffany announces.

Tom slaps Marco on the back. “Nice job, cry baby!”

Marco laughs and the two run out of the car into the next.

 

*.*.* 

 

Tom and Marco, back in normal clothing, run into an empty, dark train car — and run right into Star, who still wears her 1900s garb. The three fall on the ground and pick themselves up.

“Marco? TOM?! What are you doing here? ...together?” Star blinks and rubs her head. “Maybe I hit my head…”

“ _Star!_ Are you all right?!” Marco helps Star to her feet.

“I came to rescue you,” Tom folds his arms and looks over his shoulder at her, haughtily.

“Whuh??” Star blinks again.

Marco brushes himself off. “It’s a long story,” he explains.

Suddenly the ground shakes and cracks. A jagged line separates Tom and Marco from Star. The boys’ half of the ground rises into the air and moves back away from her. Star’s patch of ground sinks and moves further away from the boys as the whole area and ground turns into a gladiator

arena.

Tom and Marco are high up in the stands. Star is low down in the playing field of the circular arena. A large, ominous door sits at the far end of the field and shakes.

“STAR!” Marco yells.

Suddenly a large yellow lion wearing a blue jacket bursts from the door. The lion’s beard seems familiar...

The lion stands before Star and holds for a moment, looking at her. Star takes a step back and raises a quizzical eyebrow. The lion lunges at Star. Star dodges to the left.

“Narwhal blast!”

The blast hits the lion full in the forehead in an extraordinary burst of color and bouncing narwhals. However, the blast doesn’t affect him and bounces off. The lion laughs.

Star, in shock, runs behind an upturned bit of timber. She dodges around the wood and shoots another burst of magic. The lion dodges this easily. He taunts Star good-naturedly.

“You’ll have to be faster than that!” the lion growls.

Star jumps at his voice and continuing laughter. Some of her hair comes undone and she starts to look angry. She runs out from one rock to another and blasts at the lion again.

“Mystic lion suck transform!”

The lion dodges again, smiling. Suddenly, the lion launches into the air when Marco karate kicks the lion in the face. Tom has flown Marco to the rescue with his flame shoes.

The lion falls to the ground. With a loud zip, the lion becomes merely a costume out of which King River is stepping.

“Dad?” Star runs forward to greet her father. Tom and Marco step backwards, very uncomfortable.

“We just face-kicked King Butterfly,” Marco gulps.

King River walks over to Star with a smile. “Well done, Star!”

Star is astonished. “What is all this?”

“A test, my daughter, and you passed!” chuckles King River. “With the help of your friends there, who came when they thought you were in trouble, you were able to defeat all of my

challenges. Clearly your training on Earth is paying off!”

Star blushes and hugs her dad.

“Awwww, thanks dad!”

She turns to Tom and Marco.

“And you guys! You worked together to save me?”

“It was Marco’s idea,” Tom shrugs.

“Yeah, this train was retired years ago,” Marco continues. “I knew something was wrong, and the only way I could get here was with Tom’s help.”

“You guys!” Star hugs Tom and Marco in a painfully tight group hug. At first, Tom looks unhappy, and Marco looks like his head is going to explode.

“Just don’t get used to it!” Tom spits, feigning anger.

With Tom’s token protest out of the way, Star, Tom and Marco share a happier group hug.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Who here is disappointed that past me didn't give Marco some singing? *raises hand* 
> 
> Let me know if you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your thoughts slash obsess over the season finale / hiatus with you. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr or Twitter, too, @harmonicacave.


End file.
